Barkas’ collaborative and perspective-defying brand for CPH:DOX embodies the festival’s energy

Continuing their yearly development of Copenhagen Dox’s identity, Copenhagen and Stockholm-based branding studio Barkas have turned to the documentary festival’s own interplay between society, science and art for inspiration. Considering how these combined elements could conceptually and aesthetically translate into CPH:DOX’s digital and physical brand. Turning to Danish graphic designer and 3D artist Caroline Vang, the decisive result is a perspective-defying combination of stark type and realistic, fluid three-dimensional textures. Sculptural in its execution, the organic 3D shapes react to the photography of Anne Krogh below it, creating a striking layered vision that embodies the energy and movement of the festival’s primarily cinematic offerings. The combination also challenges the expectations of photographic perspectives, defying the familiar and conventional view of the world through a camera lens by allowing the fluid to distort the photography around it – capturing new reflections, perceptions, proportions and angles impossible through a fixed lens. Providing a palpable contrast, Barkas introduced newglyph’s Baikal as the 2022 festival’s typeface: the monochromatic, stoic and stark application of which provides a new layer to the identity’s alternative reality, as well as confidence and grounding to the conceptual, ethereal nature of its composition. Combined, the binary blend of CPH:DOX’s otherworldly 3D exploration and slick typographic execution make for an identity primed for the digital and physical existence of the festival – capturing the relationship the festival has with broader society, as well as the individual’s experience with the festival itself.